


meet me in the woods

by macaronidoodles



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series), Fantasy High
Genre: Character Study, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:54:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29123007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macaronidoodles/pseuds/macaronidoodles
Summary: A thought comes to him, and he pulls out the little rock he’d artificed out of his pocket. It’s probably stupid, he thinks, looking at it, so small in his hands. But there’s no one around to make fun of him, and if even one of his friends could hear…It’s Gorgug, he whispers. Keep going.*(in the forest of the nightmare king, gorgug gives everyone a chance to catch their breath)
Relationships: Gorgug Thistlespring & The Bad Kids
Comments: 22
Kudos: 79





	meet me in the woods

**Author's Note:**

> hey hey hey! remember when gorgug was so kind he broke the entire nightmare forest? bc i do!!
> 
> this was written for* the end of gorguguary, a fanart event run by the wonderful julie @smallestbrown/@gorgugsweater on tumblr! go check out her art, it's all beautiful and i love it so much 
> 
> title from meet me in the woods by lord huron, which is the ultimate fhsy song and if i had any artistic talent whatsoever i WOULD make an animatic for it
> 
> *when i say 'written for' i mean that this has been sat in my drafts for months and gorguguary just gave me the excuse to finally finish it lol

In a crumbling temple to a forgotten god in the forest of the Nightmare King, the living Bad Kids hold their hands over the cracked bones of their friend and make a vow.

_We’re scared and we’re coming for Kristen. We’re scared and we’re coming for Kristen._

Gorgug lights the incense. Riz has darted off already, but he looks around to see what the others are doing as he pockets his phone, trying to forget the weird message from Skrank. Adaine has started breathing shakily in what he recognises to be the beginnings of a panic attack, but before he can reach out to try and help her, she vanishes, and then Fig walks off with an overly confident smile, and Fabian – the smoke from the duskmoss fills the room, stinging his eyes and the back of his throat. Gorgug blinks. No, there’s no one else. He’s alone.

(A memory flashes across his mind, unbidden. He is staring up at the branches of a towering tree, stars just visible between fluttering leaves. He is warm in the arms of someone whose face he cannot see, rocking him gently back and forth, murmuring words he does not understand. He is safe. He is loved.

And then the arms let him go. He is lying on the cold, hard ground. No one speaks. There is only the sound of footsteps walking away, and then nothing but the wind whistling through the trees, the rustles of unseen things in the undergrowth. He can no longer see the stars.

Baby Gorgug wails, but no one comes, no one comes, and he shivers afraid and unloved and alone in the dark.)

Gorgug blinks again, shaking off the memory. Logically, he knows, it is not really a memory, that he would have been way too young to remember Gorbag and Ros leaving him at the Thistlespring tree, but fear has a way of twisting logic into knots. He is alone, again. Abandoned, again. Afraid, again again _again_.

He looks around for something, anything, to hold on to as his heart picks up its pace, and instinctively reaches out for Kristen’s hand. The bone is dusty and cold with the ice of centuries, the exact opposite of the soft warmth he remembers of Kristen’s touch, but in the absence of any other comfort it grounds him. She’s the reason they’re doing this.

Gorgug stands, looking down at his friend’s body. He thinks he should say something to her before he leaves, in case she can hear, like _We’re coming, hold on_ , or _I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you_ or just _I love you_ , but he doesn’t want to mess up the ritual. In his head he repeats: _We’re scared, and we’re coming for you_ , and exits the temple.

The forest is infinitely more terrifying now that they’ve done the ritual and he’s on his own, and he swears as he walks it shifts and changes. He is walking through the trees where his parents left him: now he is walking through the dark forest in hell where he went after he died. The scar from where the leaf cut into the palm of his hand stings. _Maybe you never left_ , a voice in the back of his head whispers, _maybe everything that has happened since then is a dream, a pretty lie you have told yourself as you have been slowly driven mad. You, Gorgug? With friends? A girlfriend? A rock star, on the Bloodrush team? Doesn’t that seem unlikely?_

He looks at the scar, a thin pale green line, and wraps his hand into a fist. It would be so _easy_ to go into a rage right now, switch off his brain and just wreck everything in his path, but he needs to be afraid, not angry. He keeps walking.

Around him the trees start to thicken, each trunk five times as wide as him and reaching up into the sky out of the range of his darkvision, and so close together that they feel like they’re pressing into him. He’s already feeling claustrophobic by the time the trees become thick that he can no longer squeeze through them, and the only way forward is through a tunnel made of a hollow tree that leads deep beneath the earth.

Gorgug stops for a moment. The tunnel is so small and narrow and it’s crawling with bugs and he’s already so scared and and and-

\- and that means he’s going in the right direction. He thinks of Kristen, crumbling bones, and his friends terrified in the forest somewhere, Fig and Riz and Adaine and –

And –

(There’s someone else, isn’t there?)

Ragh, Tracker, Sandralynn. Right. They need him to do this, and so though his heart thumps and his palms start to sweat he gets down on his hands and knees and crawls into the tunnel.

It’s – bad. It’s dark and hot and tight and he can’t see the bugs but he can hear them moving, feel them wriggle over his skin. Roots dig into his legs and hands, sometimes sharp enough to cut, so thick that they render his darkvision nearly useless. Gorgug thinks of all the times he was too big, too much, knocking his head in the Tree as his parents frantically worked to raise the ceilings again, and his breathing gets quick.

And then he turns a particularly narrow bend and he gets stuck. His ribcage is just a little too big and now the roots feel like they’re crushing him, and no matter how much he strains and wriggles he can’t move forward.

The voice in his head whispers: _you’re going to die down here, and no one will ever find your body._

He starts pushing forward with renewed force, half-sobbing at the thought of being stuck down here alone forever, and at last, with a nasty-sounding _crunch_ something gives way and he tumbles forward out onto a cold stone floor.

Gorgug is so grateful to be free, heaving gasps of air into his lungs, that he almost doesn’t notice the stabbing pain in his side from his cracked (broken?) ribs. He stumbles to his feet, taking a moment to catch his breath and look around. He’s somewhere new, a stone chamber with roots creeping through the ceiling. He’s made progress, at least. The fear is working.

A thought comes to him, and he pulls out the little rock he’d artificed out of his pocket. It’s probably stupid, he thinks, looking at it, so small in his hands. But there’s no one around to make fun of him, and if even one of his friends could hear…

 _It’s Gorgug_ , he whispers. _Keep going._

A shot in the dark, a message that no one will ever hear, a stone left in a tiny corner of a vast and terrible forest. But the words echo, louder than should be possible; out and out and out they roll, like a stone dropped into the still surface of a pond. A pulse, a shimmer, a flickering in the illusion woven into the trees. _It’s Gorgug. Keep going._

***

Fabian, sitting despondently in the temple, alone and invisible, feels the echo first, and for a moment he solidifies into a person again. He gets the feeling – he doesn’t know why – that Gorgug is patting him on the back, like when they’re playing a particularly tough Bloodrush game and Fabian’s getting in his head. It’s reassuring, a reminder that they’ll get through this together, even though he’s entirely alone.

The fear returns with his insubstantiality, but he is filled with a new sense of purpose. He needs to keep going. He stands and exits the temple to face his fears head on.

(After the horrors of the sexy rat and Chungledown Bim, Fabian will fall into an endless darkness, like he did on Leviathan: down, down, down, no ropes to catch him this time, no friends to come to his rescue. An absence, like the one that lives behind his eye, devoid of fame and glory and legacy. There is nothing here, and he is can feel himself becoming nothing, too.

 _Will you not write your name on the face of the world?_ The lilting voice of Cathilda, maid, mother, friend, calls from the darkness, equal parts mocking and tempting.

 _I don’t know._ Fabian tells her. _But I like the direction I'm going. Maybe I'll never write my name on the world, but I'll be with the Bad Kids._

His pulse reverberates outwards, like an earnest, whispered promise of _Spring Break, I believe in you,_ and for a moment his friends grow braver.)

***

Adaine is mid-panic attack, trapped outside the briar wall by her own fear. She’s stupid and cowardly and she left her friends behind _again_ and she can’t fucking breathe _–_

And then something washes over her, cool and quiet like a _Mending_ cantrip mumbled under Gorgug’s breath as they work to fix something broken, and Adaine takes a deep, deep breath. She’s not stupid: she’s in a forest of nightmares. Of course she’s afraid. She needs to lean into it.

She takes one more deep breath, and then, leaving her jacket and her orb behind, she closes her eyes and walks into the unknown.

(Time passes and she’s so tired and it’s so hard to keep track of it: but some time after the cliff and the drowning and the carnival, her lonely future self asks in a weepy voice, _Do you ever fear that the kindness shown to you by your friends is a reflection of their character? Our family did not love us. And perhaps there is some trait of ours that made that easy._

Adaine is crying too, enough, she feels, to fill the ocean she almost drowned in. _I fear that all the time,_ she says. _I fear it every day. But I know that my friends do love me. And so, maybe there's hope for us yet._

The air around her ripples, and the Bad Kids hear the tinkling sounds of divinatory magic, feel the conviction of their friend who would bend time and fate itself to protect them; and though the future is still uncertain, they, too, have hope.)

***

Riz, trapped in a crystal again, feels the pulse rattle the mirrors surrounding him, and briefly his anxiety fades. He almost feels like he’s been temporarily zipped into Gorgug’s hoodie, big and warm and soft, keeping him safe from the icy edges of the glass and giving him space to think. As it fades, he looks at the images that Baron is showing him. Really _looks,_ rather than glancing at them sidelong to avoid the people hooking up, and sees his friends, his family. Fabian and Ragh and Fig and Ayda and Tracker and _Kristen_. Who cares if she’s making out with her girlfriend? At least she’s alive. His dad, too.

(He tells Baron that they’re wrong. That his parents love him, that his friends love him, that Kristen sacrificed herself to save him.

Baron keeps talking, about Penny and mysteries and love, but he’s on the case now. The mirrors aren’t real. They can’t be.

 _Relationships change_ , Riz says, slowly, proud that he’s figured it out. _Penny has her own friends. I’m the little shrimp of this crew._

The mirrors shatter, and with them Baron. Throughout the forest echoes the rustling of papers, the clink of a coffee mug set down on a desk, the creaking of pins pushed into a corkboard, and the Bad Kids know that they are the sounds of love.)

***

Fig, dripping water from the scrying pool and frustrated by her inability to understand the vision it has given her, hears it next. Not words, exactly, but a steady, reliable drumbeat that echoes her quickened pulse. For a second the forest loses its edge, and she can imagine a world beyond this where she and Gorgug can write new songs about their adventures, about vanboats and shrimp parties and nightmares. About a certain half-phoenix who set her world aflame.

She takes out Ayda’s feather and tries to scry on her again. It doesn’t work. But there’s that drumbeat in her heart keeping her steady and songs to write and her friends to save, so she walks deeper into the woods towards the fear, humming a tune she has yet to find the words for.

( _What do you think is going to happen when I wear off?_ Fig’s reflection, pretty and perfect, will sneer a little later, leading her bound and gagged past the village of Hilda Hilda. _When Ayda notices the real you?_

Fig bites her lip. She has no music now, no performance or persona to hide behind, so she lets, at last, her walls crumble to the ground. _I hope_ , she says, voice trembling, _she finds something I didn’t know was there._

And a sonorous solo bass note soars out into the sky, equally lovely when played alone as in harmony with the other sounds echoing through the darkness.

When it is joined by a burst of flame and the flap of phoenix wings, the melody is all the lovelier.)

***

The bones of Kristen Applebees still lie on the floor of the chapel, but as the stone falls the image flickers, returning flesh and blood to the saint’s corpse. The pulse of hope (and the whispered words, and the plucked bass note, and the rustling of files, and the twinkling magic) echoes through her shattered ribcage, a mirror image of a heartbeat.

It is not quite enough to bring back life to the wrecked body; that will require a greater miracle. But it is enough to shake her into deathlessness so she can seek it out herself.

And it is enough that, when Kristen wakes from her vision into her lifeless body, scared and betrayed and angry, she never doubts for one second that her friends have left her behind. She feels the edges of her ruined flesh, heals her broken heart as best she can and walks unafraid into the forest of nightmares in search of the thing that killed her and the people she loves.

(After she’s well and truly renounced Helio and escaped back to the material plane, the goddess with no name will reach out their hands in return to hers. _All I ever wanted was to be there for people in the darkness and tell them that the night can't hurt you,_ they will say. _I just wanted to hold their hand when they couldn't see._

Kristen will think of that not-quite heartbeat, the faint memory of a warm, calloused hand on hers, and understand exactly what they mean _._ )

***

But that is the future. Now, the stone falls to the forest floor with a quiet thud, and Gorgug feels stupid. His friends still aren’t here and Kristen is still dead and the forest is still terrifying. This isn’t going to help anyone.

He fixes his eyes instead on the horizon, the sphinx, the puzzle, all the terrible things yet to come. He’s still terrified, still feels too small and too big at the same time. But what else is there to do?

He keeps going.

***

They do it. They face their fears, they kill the Nightmare King (kinda), they save the day. And now they’re going home.

Kristen and Fig declared Mandatory Cuddle Time as soon as they got into the van, so they’re all piled up together in one of the pockets of the Moon Haven. Fig’s head is in Ayda’s lap with her legs up on Kristen, who’s got her arms wrapped around Tracker, who’s laying across Ragh, who’s leaning into Fabian, who has Riz curled around his shoulders, whose tail is wrapped around next Adaine’s neck like a scarf, who has Aelwyn’s head resting against her shoulder. It’s hot and sweaty and kind of gross, but none of them is going anywhere.

Gorgug had been there too, wedged between the Abernant sisters and the other Owlbears, but he’s taken over driving for a bit so that Sandralynn can trance, despite the groans of protest from the others as he wiggled out to leave. He can still hear them, faintly, as they talk about their adventures, and that's good enough for him.

It’s been a while since anyone’s said anything, and he figures most of them are asleep, but then he hears Fig say softly, _was there, like, a moment where things didn’t feel so bad for you guys?_

There’s a pause, and then Fabian says, _yeah_ , and Riz says _yeah,_ and Adaine says _me too_ , and Kristen says _same_ and Fig says _huh_ and then they all go quiet again.

 _It felt like –_ Adaine says, and Fig interrupts and says _a drumbeat_ , and Riz says _, no, it was warm, like a hoodie,_ and Fabian says, _no, you’re wrong, it sounded like an Owlbear chant,_ and then Ragh sleepily mumbles _hoot growl!_ and Adaine finishes, _well, I thought it felt like magic._

There’s a pause, and then Kristen says, _for me it was all of you. Like a heartbeat._

 _Huh,_ Fig says again. _Wonder if Gorgug felt anything._

He can hear the frown in Adaine’s voice as she says _I wonder what caused it. It must have been very powerful magic to break the forest’s enchantment._

No one knows, and after a moment the conversation moves on. But Gorgug’s smart now, so he knows the answer, and he smiles a little to himself. He’ll tell them if they ask. And he’ll tell them he heard them, too. That they’re the reason he kept trying. That they’re the reason he figured it out.

He flicks on the Hangvan’s headlights as night begins to fall and yawns. Soon Sandralynn will come to take over for him and he’ll return to his friends, and soon he’ll sleep, and soon after they’ll be home. Soon. For now, Gorgug listens contentedly to his friends laughing, safe and alive and together, and looks out at the road ahead, and keeps going.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! comments and kudos are always appreciated, and you can check me out on tumblr @kristenbeeapples


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